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A Pumpkin-Filled Halloween

Since it is nearly the end of November, I figure it’s about time to get my Halloween post up.  We were very un-halloween-y this year.  The wonderful Dori was in town, and we didn’t eat any Halloween candy at all! We didn’t dress up and we didn’t trick-or-treat (and since we’re in a secure building, no kiddies stopped by for our non-existent candy).  However, we kept the spirit of the holiday alive with lots of pumpkin!

So that is actually a picture from last year’s pumpkin t-shirt.  It is one of the most adorable Santana pictures ever.  But she did wear it this week to celebrate!  This year she was actually a scary scary green monster…

Last year she also attempted to be a bat….this got mixed reviews.

Instead of eating out for Dori’s whole visit, we made a fun asian-inspired dinner one night. It included peanut butter pumpkin curry noodle.  It was…strange. But mostly good.  At first, the flavor of the sauce was very off-putting, but once we thinned it out and added a bit more peanut butter, it was pretty tasty and made a nice side to the coconut shrimp soup we made.  This was a really light, pretty soup that I enjoyed quite a bit and had for leftovers the next day.  In the original version of the soup, the shrimp was cooked perfectly, nice and soft, but of course when reheated it got a tiny bit rubbery. Bleh.

 

We also tried these fancy juices called “First Blush”.  They’re basically grape juices from wine grapes…chardonnay, merlot, etc.  We did a group taste test. Including one that was a juice-tea blend.  I think we all agreed on which one we liked best…but I can’t remember which it was at this point.  Dori, do you remember???

To round out the pumpkin-y-ness of the weekend, Dori had french toast stuffed inside of a pumpkin for breakfast one day. Insanity!

It’s officially fall…

I am on the road.  Insanely on the road.  Next week I actually get to be in the office for the whole week, but other than that I’m spending most of my time out of town until Thanksgiving.  Fun and new places, but exhausting!

Even though I have a bit more time while I’m on the road to write, the preparation for the travel has made blog food scarce.  We’ve been relying on a lot of old standby meals, leftovers from the freezer, and way too much restaurant food.  We’ve also done some crazy travelling as we’ve moved from summer into fall….including our trip to North Carolina, during which Santana stayed at PetSmart.  The very next weekend we zoomed down to Berkeley for a wedding, which Santana can also fill you in on.  Both were a bit quick and chaotic, but really fun and relaxing.  I loved being able to have a couple trips with Matt to just relax and enjoy our time together without work craziness getting in the way.

In better food news, since fall has definitely set in, it is crock pot weather for sure!  We actually used the Crockpot a decent amount during the summer, but fall means lots of soups, stews and chili…plus lots of leftovers to restock our freezer!

We said goodbye to the summer with a light meal that lasted us through two dinners and 1 lunch for me.  Tomato bacon quiche (which we had frozen from a couple months ago) with a spinach honey mustard salad and some lightly salted Kettle chips.  We were both huge huge fans of this meal, which is why it was repeated twice…usually we make some changes, switch up the side dishes, etc.  This time the same meal found its way to our plates two nights in a row.  So delicious and satisfying.  And a nice light end to the summer.  Bonus: homemade garlic croutons!

 

To welcome in the fall, we made a vegetarian chili cornbread casserole that completely outdid itself as a shared dish at a potluck, dinner for us at home, and is lasting Matt through this week while I’m out of town.  To make the chili, I mixed 4 or 5 cans of black and pinto beans (1 can of beans got mashed up) in the Crockpot with sautéed onion, green bell pepper and garlic.  I also added some spices, hot sauce and a can of green chilies.  Two cans of diced tomatoes rounded out the liquid in the pot and it cooked all day on high, bubbling away. 

I poured the cooked chili into two casserole dishes and topped each one with the batter for this cornbread with the addition of some shredded cheese to the mix.  They baked for about 40 minutes or so and then one went to the potluck, while the other chilled in the fridge, waiting for us the next day.

For our leftovers, we covered the 2nd casserole and popped it back in the oven to reheat.  While that was cooking a tossed some fresh broccoli with a tiny bit of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Into the oven it went to roast away.  It got crazy crispy and had a tiny zing from the balsamic.  Really wonderful.

The other star of the potluck and our leftovers was a fruit cobbler with fresh plums, pluots and nectarines, frozen blackberries, and a whole wheat cobbler crust.  Served with vanilla ice cream, obviously. 🙂

 

Meanwhile, Santana’s meals have remained pretty steady.  Because of her allergies and anxiety, she gets Benadryl and Pepcid before dinner.  Since she is so fussy, she gets the wonderful treat of having her meds wrapped in peanut butter (freshly ground peanuts from Whole Foods….Matt and I don’t even get this fancy for ourselves!). She follows this up with some dry food which must be amazing because she gobbles it down like a fiend.  What a gourmand.

 

Back to Basics

I’m currently blogging from the lovely Red Roof Inn just outside of Charlotte’s airport.  We spent the long weekend in NC with my aunt, grandma, brother and his girlfriend.  Extremely relaxing and just what I needed.  We did absolutely nothing…sat around, watched tv, made fun of each other, and ate lots of grandma’s delicious food.  Love it.  We’ve been spending lots of time watching the US Open….Matt is a huge tennis fan, and I am catching on. 🙂

Santana spent the weekend at the PetSmart PetsHotel….I felt like a mom dropping my kid off at school for the first time.  It was rough.  I called to check on her once this weekend, and the guy I talked to said she has been having a great time, playing with other dogs, and really enjoying the extra vanilla ice cream treat we paid for.  I can’t wait to see her!

Anyway, before we left, there wasn’t much to blog about food-wise, since we spent the week using up the stuff in our fridge.  Not only did we pull out some of the leftover frozen chili (mostly so that I could make cornbread and make another strata!), we also used a bunch of our fruits and veggies from the CSA in really easy, hearty and satisfying dishes that just got tossed in the oven to bake.  It was nice having things that were so quick and simple.  I love being able to just add a little oil and seasoning (or sugar and cinnamon in the case of fruit), throw the pan in the oven and have a tasty dish that brings out the best qualities of the produce.

Here are a couple pictures of our roast vegetables (pre-roasting and finished product).  We always love these, and I think in the winter we’ll do it a lot more.  It’s hard to justify heating up the apartment with the oven mid-summer.  This batch had freshly dug red potatoes, beautiful striped beets (they lost their stripes while they roasted!), local carrots and a couple green bell peppers.   Tossed with some olive oil, smashed garlic, salt and pepper.  We served it with some butter lettuce dressed with a bit of parmesan herb dressing.  We had some salmon burgers from the store we planned to add on top, but they were not tasty at all, so we just omitted.  It was still delicious and I had the leftover veggies the next day for lunch!

I love the way the veggies get crisp along the edges and all of their sweetness comes pouring out with a little bit of coaxing.  

The second was a fruit crisp.  We got a ton of blueberries in our box (and had some leftover from when Matt’s mom and aunt were in town), so we grabbed some raspberries and peaches from the store.  Tossed with a little sugar, cornstarch, and a couple other things. The mix filled a huge baking dish.

These colors are amazing together.  I didn’t manage to get a picture of the finished crisp…we were too hungry…but it got topped with a streusel-type topping and baked away.  Gooey and warm and perfect for topping some vanilla ice cream.  My coworkers got the leftovers of this one.

A week of delicious reminders that sometimes it just takes a tiny bit of prep to create some wonderful flavors from produce. 

We get home tomorrow afternoon and then head out Thursday morning for a long drive down to Berkeley for a wedding.  Another week with very little cooking.  We’ll see what comes the following week and then I’m on the road for the last week of September and most of October/November as well.  Maybe Matt will have to guest post with all the fun things he is eating while I’m travelling for work. 🙂

The summer is flying by!

So I’d like to say that I have been off on some amazing adventures and that is why I’ve been absent from the blog for so long (almost a month!), but that is definitely not the case.

I have been busy with normal every-day things along with visitors, work events, hot weather and generally lots of stuff to distract me from new recipes and setting aside half an hour to write a blog post.

I do have a recipe almost ready to post from mid-July…since then there has been lots of comfort food, old recipes, hodge-podge dishes and eating out…LOTS of eating out.

A few food-related things to bring me back into blogland:

-        Julie & Julia

• Matt very wonderfully agreed to go see this with me.  I have been a huge fan of Julia Child since elementary school, when sick days meant I could lay in bed with my Grandma and watch Julia Child and Graham Kerr on PBS.  Not only do I love her story and her food, but her attitude cracks me up…every time I catch her on TV I can’t help laughing.  If you aren’t familiar with her background, the movie does a good job of the events leading up to her cooking fame.
• The Amy Adams portion of Julie & Julia was done really well.  It’s a great comparison of the cookbook/food television/celebrity chef pioneer in Julia Child and the food blogging/internet celebrity pioneer of Julie Powell.  The two stories butted up against each other nicely and Adams and Chris Messina portray a really uniquely intimate couple with an amazing and fun relationship to food and the role it plays in their lives (even before Julie sets out on the year-long blogging endeavor).
• Of particular importance…the FOOD!   There are plenty of times in movies and books when the food looks or sounds so amazing that I need to go out and find a recipe…there were several points in Julie & Julia that I felt this urge.  The most was with the bruschetta near the beginning of the movie, when Julie and her husband come to the conclusion that she should write a food blog.  The fried bread topped with the juicy pile of cherry tomatoes soaking in looked AMAZING. I may have to make some of this very soon.
• Beyond all this, Meryl Streep as Julia Child blew the movie out of the water.  She was insanely amazing.  If Julie Powell’s story was made into its own movie, I might go to see it…would definitely get it from Netflix after it was on DVD.  If the Julia Child portion of the movie stood on it’s own, I would be all over it.  Not only because Child’s story is so interesting, but because Meryl Streep did an unbelievable job of portraying such a unique and iconic figure in our culture.  She got the voice, the mannerisms, the humor, everything down pat.  Loved it.  I spent a lot of time laughing, and a few times crying along with Julia (in both happiness and sadness).
• Bottom line, the movie made me HUNGRY!  Good thing we had dinner plans afterward… 🙂

-   As a part of the Tastemaker program with Foodbuzz, I had the exciting pleasure of getting a box full of goodies from Emeril a few weeks ago!  With a chicken spice rub (yet-to-be-tried), a large box of organic chicken stock (HOORAY!), Emeril’s Original Essence Seasoning (fun!) and specialty kicked-up horseradish mustard (brown mustard that we used in recreating this dish and Veronica used on her sandwiches for lunch during the two weeks she was visiting), I had a very very Emeril-filled kitchen for a while.  The seasonings are still in my cupboard, since they’ll take a while to get through, but the stock got used up quickly in a few different dishes and the mustard was perfect in the Maple Pork and Apples.  Delicious!  Thanks Foodbuzz and Emeril (who I’m not a huge fan of, but who makes some pretty delicious products and recipes)!

-    I also have some coupons from Nakano Seasoned Rice Vinegars which I hope are still good…I haven’t redeemed them yet, but am excited to try some out with the recipe book they included! There are a bunch of flavors on their website. I’m not sure which I want to try!  The garlic and pesto sound yummy, but I am also a big balsamic fan, so I may have to go that route…we’ll see what our grocery store offers!

Goals:

1 – Post the blog that is sitting there waiting for me to add pictures and hit “Publish”

2 – Find some Nakano vinegar and create something yummy to share with you

3 – Get back on track with new food adventures and blogging regularly

Wish me luck!

(Matt’s mom & aunt are in town this weekend! Exciting! But, probably not a ton of blogging will be done…stay tuned!)

A Wonderful New Blog (and Giveaway!)

For any of you who love any of the following things:

1. Books/reading
2. Hilarious up-and-coming writers
3. Young Adult literature
4. Shenanigans
5. Free stuff!

One of my good friends, Corey, has started a site called Twin Pigeon.  I lived with Corey in my freshman year of Undergrad in KY and we spent a lot of time goofing around, eating wonderful college food and talking about music/books/movies.  Corey is hilarious…there is really no other way to describe her in a nutshell.  I am always thrilled when I see an email pop up in my inbox from her because it is full of goodness.  She got me hooked on the Twilight series, and I’m not sure if I should thank or curse her for that.  It’s too late now though, so we just spend a lot of time making stupid jokes about how many times the word “chagrin” is used in the series. 

In case you missed the subtle hints above, Corey is big into Young Adult fiction.  I am not as well-versed as she is, but I love it! For me, between semesters in an English BA (followed by more semesters in an English MA) program, something like Twilight is just what I needed.  YA novels tend to suck you in like no other (except maybe Picoult?) and get you to love characters who have a good chance of being ridiculously annoying and will probably make horrible decisions repeatedly throughout the book.  It’s awesome.

Another wonderful thing to know about Corey:  she had a KICKASS wedding…I was a super-helpful bridesmaid, dressed all in red.  We marched up the aisles of the KY theater for a dark and wonderfully romantic ceremony on the stage with a delicious reception full of movie-themed goodies all around.  Yet another reason she is great.  Does this make you want to visit her new blog???

ANYWAY, Twin Pigeon is currently mostly about reviewing YA books…it’s just getting started, so send her some love/suggestions/harsh criticism/knee-slapping jokes about vampires/whatever.  BUT to start things off on a blogger-friendly note, Corey is giving away a book!  A FREE BOOK! This one is a brand new, hardback, just released, fresh off the presses, exciting work of literary wonderment. You all know how contests work, so click your way over and enter Corey’s contest and explore her quickly growing site 🙂

PS.
Corey, WOOO!